Author
Topic: Junji ito (Horror comics) (Read 446 times)

I first thought of putting this in anime, but thinking about his work, I'd consider junji itos work beyond just the realm of japanese animation or drawings, since for one his work isn't animated but in comics, and second his work reaches beyond the anime genre.

I've been into comic books for years, and into horror for a while, but never really looked into the horror side of comic books, since outside of weird tales, some classic movie monster interpretations via comics, theres never really been much of a focus on telling really good horror stories through the media of comics. Unlike in film and tv, where you can apply aspects of horror to filming through motion, and in written stories where you read yourself into the situation in horror, comic books haven't really gotten that much attention.

And then I discovered Ito's work. This is a guy who knows how to make use of the concept of comic books, and apply that to his work, the page turner, the shock, the slow build up, the tension raising in his work.

From what I read, concepts in games like silent hill came from people reading works by Junji Ito, applying that to the games and it was even going to be a source of inspiration for the cancel silent Hills game by Guillermo del Toro. It feels like Ito's work in modern day horror is often overlooked, but to me has the same weight to it as lovecraft has.

Unlike is a lot of horro mediums where they reveal what the monster is and thus creates a sense of us understanding the threat and how to confront it, Ito doesn't allow that to happen, the horrors he creates are left to our imagination and it makes them all the more terrifying. The spiral curse in uzumaki, which has a very lovecraftian theme around it, it isn't explained why the town of Kurōzu-cho has this curse upon it, its just showing what the curse does to it, and the fate of the town. You don't need to understand it, because Ito's intent is to take the ordinary and twist it into something twisted and messed up.

I mean the guy took the idea of icecream and.. yeah don't want to say how that turned out.

I stumbled across Gyo on a random internet search. For a while, I was transfixed. It was truly unnerving. Sure enough, it was written by Junji Ito.

It's well outside what I'm comfortable with, so I haven't seen much of it, but I applaud his effort. It's comforting to know that there's stuff out there that's too creepy even for me.

thats what i love about his work. I've watched a lot of horror in the last 15 years, and I've grown to know what it is that I actually find scary and what i'm just desensitized to. Things like cheep jump scares and huge amounts of gore aren't scary to me anymore. but Ito has always applied the uncanny valley to his work, which for any good writer, director or in this came comic book artist, is what builds real suspense in a horror setting, making the payoff all the most lasting and satisfying.

Its also this thing where, it would take a brilliant director to bring his work to the big or small screen, because his work is so designed around the genre, attempts at trying to implement it to film haven't gone over so well.

And yeah Gyo is a good one, gets pretty intense in places. What you see early on in that story gets so much more fucked up later, true Ito style.